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Pacer International’s growing shipping-container business and its presence along the Mexican
border proved too valuable for XPO Logistics to pass up.

XPO, a Greenwich, Conn., transportation company, said yesterday that it will buy Dublin-based
Pacer in a $335 million deal. The combined enterprise will become the third-largest North American
provider of what are called intermodal transportation services, which move goods packaged in
containers by ship, truck and train.

“We’re bullish about this acquisition for a lot of reasons,” Bradley Jacobs, XPO’s chairman and
CEO, said during a conference call with analysts.

Under the deal, Pacer shareholders will get $6 in cash and XPO stock equal to $3 for each share
of Pacer. Pacer shares, which more than doubled last year, jumped nearly 8 percent, or 66 cents a
share, to close at $8.99 in trading yesterday.

XPO shares also were up big on the announcement, jumping 8.1 percent, or $2.28, to $30.31. The
shares reached as high as $30.90.

The deal is expected to close this spring.

As part of the deal, Daniel Avramovich, Pacer’s CEO, and substantially all of Pacer’s executives
will stay when the merger is complete. Avramovich will become CEO of a newly created XPO unit that
will retain Pacer’s Dublin operations center.

Pacer operates at 30 locations and has about 950 employees, including 400 in Dublin. Whether any
of them will be affected by the deal is too early to say, said Steve Markosky, Pacer’s vice
president of investor relations.

Pacer, founded in 1997, handles approximately 10 percent of all domestic intermodal freight
movements and is the largest provider of intermodal services between the U.S. and Mexico. For the
year ended Nov. 30, it had revenue of about $1 billion.

The combined company will serve 12,000 customers and will have 3,200 employees in 124
locations.

“XPO is a proven leader in the industry with a track record of strong performance as one of the
fastest-growing providers of transportation and logistic services in North America,” Avramovich
said on the conference call. “In XPO, we found a partner that has great respect for our company,
recognizes the value of Pacer employees and shares our confidence about our business.”

XPO has been growing rapidly. Its deal for Pacer is its 11th in the past two years.

Jacobs said the $15 billion intermodal business is growing about three to five times faster than
the nation’s economy as a whole, and both companies offer complementary services that will work
well together.

Columbus economic-development officials have focused on transportation and shipping as a key
growth area of the local economy.

Columbus 2020, the region’s economic-development arm, says about 70,000 people are employed in
the industry in an 11-county central Ohio region.

“We look forward to learning more about XPO, and as a major logistics and intermodal hub, we
look forward to working with them to advance our economic development strategies and our logistics
sector,” said Kenny McDonald, Columbus 2020’s chief economic officer.